My eyes began to sting with grit and heat.
I crossed the high bridge over the motorway, which was swarming with beeping cars and motorbikes and people heaving carts through the murky air. I was home. I could hear the praying coming from our house as I went along the back alleys until I saw that some relatives of ours standing in the front yard. A flash of lightning gave them a strange yellow glow for a moment and then the youngest boy began waving and shouting to me. My father should be greeting them, I thought stupidly, and my mother, and they should not be standing there in the heat and wind with the storm coming.
In truth, our house is not large, and inside was full of other relatives. I could not find my mother, but my eldest sister came forward to greet me. I saw that she had been crying – but my own eyes stayed dry. Even when I saw the white shroud that tightly held my father’s body – when the thunder and rain came shouting, banging and smashing on the roof, and when we took him to be buried the next day and I watched my grown-up brothers carry him without stumbling to the car. Even now, so many years after, as I am remembering, it feels like it felt then. Inch by inch, I turned to very cold stone – the feet first, followed by the hands and chest. The cold feeling crept along the veins in my arms and ran like ice down into my fingertips. I became very quiet and still. I went through all of the prayers and rituals with the spice of incense burning at my nostrils. I did not want the green and pink cakes that my sister offered to the neighbours.
More than anything, I was disappointed to find that this is what happens in spite of everything, to change colour and shrink, and to be wrapped in white cloth like some terrible gift for the earth to receive. Even to men like my father, who had a reputation for being very lucky and was able to steer his large family away from trouble and into prosperity.
After most of the people had left, my mother made me a place to sleep on the floor by the window, next to my small cousin. I lay looking out at the darkness through a gap in the curtains, listening to the clatter of cups and plates being washed and stacked. The big rain turned into smaller rain and finally disappeared. The grown-up men of the family would take him very early, at first light, and then come back to help my mother receive visitors and to observe the three days of mourning. I wondered who would now catch and tend the doves that my father used to sell at the markets and who would raise the rabbits and chickens and go around buying and selling all kinds of useful things in order for us to live.
For the next few days it seemed that everything in our house had changed, but around us the streets continued their song as if nothing had happened. Children rose like ragged birds in the mornings and chirped and screamed and laughed on the roadside where they always played. Women carried baskets of cakes through the neighbourhood and men pushed their breakfast carts selling bubur ayam and coffee and fried snacks. The ojek drivers watched the street and smoked and gossiped and waited for customers.
I wanted to stay there amongst the cheerful noises and the quiet shadows of our house, where my father’s presence could still be felt in the corners and around the windowsills, but my lessons had already been paid for the next two years and my mother was anxious to begin honouring my father’s wishes straight away. So, a week after the funeral, she packed my things. This was not an easy task as I had made up my mind not to return to school, so as soon as she had finished packing the case, I took everything out again and returned the case to the shelf where I kept my things. After I had unpacked for a third time, my mother called two of my sisters to help her. At the sight of me standing there, glaring fiercely, in front of the neatly stacked clothing, all three of them started giggling. That was an insult I was not prepared to take. I was surprised to find my legs moving of their own accord, and a loud screaming noise coming out of me.
You think it’s funny! Why are you sending me away from my father’s house? I started kicking at the case and then picked it up and threw it across the room. Unluckily, it hit my mother’s shelf of special family things, including flowers and photographs of my father, which came crashing down from the wall.
Suddenly nobody was laughing.
Fajar, I thought you were a good boy, said my mother, in a shocked voice.
My eldest brother, Rhamat, came running downstairs to find me standing amongst the debris, breathless and defiant. He swiftly grabbed me by the shoulders and then pulled down my trousers and took off his belt.
My mother tried to intervene.
Rhamat! No!
But Rhamat would not listen.
This kind of temper shows a very bad character, he said steadily, waving at them to stand back. Best to catch it early.
He pinned me down on the table with one hand and thrashed at my legs and buttocks many times with the belt, while my mother and sisters stood and watched him. That is the way it would be from then on: Rhamat taking over my father’s position in the family before we even had a chance to get used to his death, but unlike my father, Rhamat did not hesitate to use force. He would beat any of us, especially the boys, while the women would stand there like stunned deer, staring wide-eyed, and doing nothing.
I did not give Rhamat the satisfaction of crying out when he beat me. I kept silent, and afterwards walked out of the house without looking at any of them. That night when I returned, I lay awake with the red welts stinging, my skin itching, but I was determined not to show any feelings, even to myself.
The next morning, I ate the breakfast that my mother cooked for me, and then the two of us walked, without speaking, to the bus stop.
You must work hard and try to be gentle, she said, as she hugged me goodbye.
I did not answer. She looked small and worried as the bus the bus pulled away, but I did not return her wave.
On the way back to school, I stared out of the window, barely noticing the other people riding on the bus. I watched the sky change from dirty brown to pale blue and the tall city buildings dwindle into the distance. Nobody was waiting for me at the bus stop, so I walked down the laneway alone and found the latch on the gate at the back of the school grounds. I returned to my classes without any fuss – a cold stone boy, but nobody seemed to notice any difference.
All that was more than twelve years ago. I am not a child anymore, but that’s not easy to explain to five older brothers and six older sisters. Rhamat is still the bossiest and the worst. Although my mother is the head of the family, and she still tries to do things according to my father’s directions, Rhamat argues with everything and always wants the best of everything for himself and his dog-faced wife.
He is twenty years older than me, and all of us hate him. We wish he had not taken the place as the first man of the family. My mother has said that perhaps one day he will be run over by a bus. When she said that I told her that he is our brother and we must try to love him, but in my secret heart I was glad to hear it spoken.
Our mother works very hard and watches over us, especially me because I am the youngest, and my next brother Satiya because he is lazy and will not settle down to a wife or a job. He is ten years older than me and we have four sisters in between.
Everyone says that Satiya and I are the handsome ones in our family and also that we could be twins, but I don’t think so. For a start, he is shorter than me, and he covers his face with a beard. I can see that his eyes are dark like mine and he has high cheekbones and curly hair that he grows long and ties with a red bandana. I keep my
